Watch The Australian Voices on YouTube

"Not Now, Not Ever!" (Gillard Misogyny Speech) by Rob Davidson

From the composer, Rob Davidson:
"When I heard Julia Gillard's parliamentary speech addressing misogyny, it struck me that behind the politics there was a lot of personal feeling being communicated. I wanted to put a frame around this slice of time, to heighten my perception of what was being said behind the
words, in the intonation of the voice, and in the dynamics of what was being said in interjections and reactions. The resulting choral piece, in which the singers echo and support the Prime Minister's speech melodies, is initially quite humorous, as we are confronted with the melody that perhaps was not evident to us before. As the music goes on, it passes into something more serious, and (it is hoped) we hear the Prime Minister as a woman experiencing very real emotions.
The Australian Voices are the ideal performers for such a work - ready for anything and enthusiastic to tackle any challenge, these brilliant young artists threw themselves into the highly unfamiliar approach to choral singing, with results that I find exhilarating as a composer."

A Stain On Our Soul (Tony Abbott) by Rob Davidson

From the composer, Robert Davidson: “I have been fascinated by the idea that each one of us has our own musical style, found in the way we speak. This composition is a snapshot of our Prime Minister’s musical style, in a rather sombre and personal mode. I was moved by the personal disclosure in this speech, and strongly drawn to the qualities, musical and verbal, of the repeated phrase “our failures towards Australia’s first people were a stain on our soul”.

The 9 Cutest Things That Ever Happened by Gordon Hamilton

Scott (our producer) and I were chewing over ideas for new video compositions when he found Jack Shepherd's amazing article on BuzzFeed, "The 50 Cutest Things That Ever Happened" (a cuteness oversupply on an almost cosmic scale!) It was the poetic, pseudo-religious cadence of the photo captions that suggested to me the (mis)use of anglican chant, or harmonised recitative: a chord is notated and the text sung quite freely to a natural speech rhythm. So there is a feeling of incanting a psalm. A psalm about Cute Baby Animals.

Holy shit, someone took one of my posts and turned it into a fucking Oratorio. With a full choir. This is amazing. buzzfeed.com/scottg9/the-9-…

Toy Story 3 = Awesome! (The Facebook Song) by Gordon Hamilton

Breaking new ground has always been the mantra of The Australian Voices. Now one of the country’s most acclaimed vocal ensembles embraces the idiom of social media, putting the internet’s cultural powerhouse to song in a new and adventurous creation. This quirky and experiential composition expresses the contemporary phenomenon in a dynamic and serendipitous choral presentation.

In “Toy Story 3 = Awesome!”, The Australian Voices sing a song of Facebook. Composed and conducted by Artistic Director, Gordon Hamilton, this innovative new Facebook Song takes The Australian Voices where no choir has dared to go – the inner space of the internet and the unexplored and unexpected worlds of new experiences, bizarre human relationships and pop culture adoration. This journey discovers new languages and the addictive memes and viral concepts that are attaching themselves to every facet of human life. More...

Waltzing Matilda arr. Gordon Hamilton

This beautiful arrangement of Waltzing Matilda conducted by Gordon during our recent tour to China. Live recording from the beautiful Xinghai Concert Hall in Guangzhou. Featuring Charles Hacker on the solo.

6 Miniatures

Six miniature pieces.

Initialise by Gordon Hamilton

The post-modern Internet Hipster, rather than merely saying the words of a common expression, clarifies his or her exact meaning by spelling them out, one initial letter at a time. It would be completely passé to say 'Oh my God/gosh,' instead of 'OMG'. As it would be to actually laugh, rather than saying 'LOL.'

In this piece a stream of Three-Letter Initialisms (conveniently abbreviated as 'T.L.I.s') grouped into three different categories: 1. those that sound good together ('SnM, ATM.'); 2. those that tell a story (CPR DOA RIP); and 3. those which contradict each other ('KKK AOK' - and please, click 'discard' on your emails of complaint - we know that the KKK definitely is not AOK!)

In some cases maybe no one can tell whether or not they agree or contradict ('GFC KFC' and 'KGB GOP' come to mind.)

The music is just like the words: repetitive, obsessive and abbreviated. In the bits that sound like they are sung over and over to different words, really that's it - a single bar is repeated three or five or six times with three or five or six different lots of lyrics ('lyrics' might be the wrong word). If we can't be bothered writing/saying the whole expression, why bother writing out the damned notes?

The Australian Voices SIX

Six members of The Australian Voices sing Rachmaninov's Bogoroditse Devo from his larger work the "All Night Vigil" commonly known as the Vespers. Coming soon to 80 cities around the United Kingdom. Check out our tickets page for details.

Yue Er Ming (Moon is Bright) arr. Nicholas Ng

The Australian Voices in Concert presents stunningly beautiful and mysterious music from Australia. Hear the desert, the rainforest and the reef in surround-sound.

MOON by Gordon Hamilton

MOON is an epic song of love - written by Veny Armanno and composed by Gordon Hamilton. Diana, the moon, is lonely and sends out her moonbeams looking for love. She finds Sam, a young man, sick in bed. And so begins a really long distance relationship...

This is live footage from Melbourne Festival of Choirs at BMW Edge, Federation Square, Melbourne.

We Apologise by Rob Davidson

In this electro-acoustic piece, Davidson applies a microscope to sound. Using the words "we apologise" from then-Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's historic 2008 apology to aboriginal Australians for past mistreatment, Davidson creates a beautiful soundscape by slowing the audio down by 250 times. We use our voices to imitate this slow version then speed up the recording 250 times to see if we can hear Kevin Rudd's voice re-emerge. The result surprised us all!

Davidson used 250 times which is pretty much the same ratio as the amount of time white people have been in Australia compared to indigenous peoples.

Tra$h Ma$h by Gordon Hamilton

Tra$h Ma$h is a piece made up entirely of musical quotes lifted directly from modern pop songs and mashed together using the Tippet technique (perfect for our 21st century attention spans!) More...

Misra Chappu by Lisa Young

Absolutely beautiful piece by Gordon Hamilton & The Australian Voices. Text by John Shaw Neilson. This is amateur footage from St Stephani, Bremen in December, 2010.

Wirindji by Stephen Leek

The Australian Voices conducted by Gordon Hamilton sing Wirindji, by Stephen Leek, during their 2010 Germany Tour.

The text of this piece is really cool. It is about a mystical tribe of desert women who would stamp their feet into the dust creating beautiful clouds. Light would shine through and create patterns and rainbows. Men would be attracted by these clouds and come to the women's camp. The Wirindji women would cook for them, mate with them then kill them and eat them! You can hear the beautiful sounds of the desert landscape, the clusters of sunlight and the dangerous moral...